He was often in a state of trance. He also believed in an oracle or inner voice which guided him in all moments of crisis. When in his last days he was addressing the court in Athens, he was guided by the behest of this inner voice. Nevertheless, Socrates has been classed among philosophers. His followers did not try to create a religious community based on his personality or his teachings. This fact shows clearly the difference between the Indian and the Greek spirit. In Greece elements of religion acquired the characteristics of philosophy; in India philosophy was itself turned into religion.
The distinction we have drawn between philosophy and religion cannot, therefore, describe accurately the Indian situation. If we try to apply to India the criterion which distinguishes philosophy from religion, we will either have to change the criterion itself or recognize that in India philosophy and religion have pursued the same path. We have attempted to form an idea of the intellectual make-up of India of the sixth century B.c. from an analysis of the personalities of Gautama the Buddha and Mahavira. We should now enquire into the external evidence to justify the conclusions we have drawn from such internal considerations.
All students of Indian philosophy are today agreed that the philosophy of the Upanisads had already begun to develop before the emergence of Gautarna the Buddha and Mahavira. It is also admitted generally that those Upanisads which are recognized to be the oldest were composed about the eighth century B. C. Authorities, however, differ as to the period and order of emergence of the six Indian systems or Darsanas. According to some, the Charvaka school had been developed before the time of Gautama the Buddha. They quote in evidence certain references in the Upanisads which suggest that a materialistic interpretation of the universe had already taken shape, and this is the essence of Charvaka's thought. Others have expressed similar opinions about the Samkhya and the Yoga systems. They emphasize the fact that Buddhism contains some parallel lines of thought and infer that these two Schools must be, if not earlier than, at least contemporaneous with Gautama the Buddha.
If the views of these scholars are accepted, the beginnings of Indian philosophy ·will have to be pushed back several centuries earlier than the seventh century B.c. It is evident that in order to account for such a stage of development in the seventh century B. c., metaphysical speculations must have begun here at least several hundred years ago. In Greece it took almost three hundred years to reach from Thales to Aristotle. There would be nothing surprising if in India also it had taken an equal period to develop the systems of the Samkhya, the Yoga and the Charvaka from the first gropings of philosophical speculation. It would thus be a plausible inference to hold that the beginnings of Indian philosophy can be traced back to a thousand years before Christ.
